Often the biggest question I hear and also any vendors most difficult and often scariest predicament. For Frank, its an easy answer…. LIST FIRST… But here’s a few reasons why…

The market conditions being the first and foremost, since we emerged from the first national lockdown, the market has seen an unprecedented demand for property from eager buyers combined with a distinctive lack of new listings in evey area and price range imaginable. The market conditions are what to I refer as a driver of how anybody can move regardless of how you or I would like it to magically happen in our perfect world of a stress free move. As an agent working within highly sought after areas, I am often finding that we are dealing with a minimum of forty viewings requests per property within two or three days of their listing. Now thirty of those requests will be registered and consequently booked to view because they have either sold their property or they DON’T NEED to sell, however perhaps the remaining ten requests will be from clients who do NEED to sell their property before they have the ability to buy their next home but they are not even on the market yet. Now let’s be ‘FRANK’ about this situation, in my experience given the amount of ‘proceedable’ viewings booked, ‘proceedable being the thirty viewings’, chances are it’s going to be sold. Therefore, if any of those ten viewers did like it, can they buy it? No. Are we allowing them to get their hopes up by even viewing it? In my opinion yes. This is a topic of discussion that is highly debated and contentious and I can always see both sides of the coin, however if you had your home on the market and had gone to the lengths that most people to do present their home, would you want people viewing it who are not in a position to buy it? I always compare it to when I was a young twenty something, window shopping a week before pay day. The harsh reality is, chances are it will be gone by the time you can buy it. 

For the majority of 2021, the houses which Frank had the pleasure to list and then sell, were for vendors who had not yet found their next home. This means that firstly, there was no impending panic to rush the marketing, we were given the chance to take our time and perfect every element of the marketing strategy from carefully staged professional photography to a stylish editorial and then our nail biting social media secret leaks, eventuating in a perfect launch for each and every property. Then there is the marketing price, given that again there is no immediate panic to sell within 24 hours, we had the opportunity to test the market at the highest possible price. Now let’s not get this confused with ‘over-priced’ because that’s a whole another blog, but ‘the highest possible price’ is where I feel we can test the market without having a detrimental effect on the marketing as a whole. Then we can use our time wisely to achieve you the best possible price and as importantly from a buyer WHO CAN WORK TO YOUR TIMESCALES, a crucial factor when agreeing your sale.

This is the part that then entails complete and utter trust in your agent and their best interests for you and your home moving plan. Yes, I said it… TRUST. This is when we need to rewind in the process slightly, yes you should market before you find but with an agent that you trust to relay the importance of time management to any potential buyers and to stress the time constraints that will involve you being able to find your next property without worry or stress that you have to do this immediately. However, all being well you picked the right agent, so now having had the time to test the market and therefore achieve the best possible price, you are now free to explore the market as a ‘proceedable’ buyer, with a clear budget having sold with the added benefit of being taken seriously by selling agents. Yes, that all sounds perfect and I realise we are from a perfect world, but in my experience if it is expertly managed by an experienced and honest agent, it doesn’t often go wrong. The worst that can happen, your buyer gets fed up waiting and they withdraw, in which case it just wasn’t meant to be, so we start again. No, its not always that simple and there are lots of caveats I would always put in place to protect your best interests, no it doesn’t always work but within this market, it is the only way in my opinion to move and my success rate so far proves that I believe this is the best advice.

Equally, if you are reading this and you have already found your next dream home, Frank has been known to pull out all the stops and make it happen, no matter what it took!